London Indian Film Festival Goes Online with Satyajit Ray Short Film Winners

The London Indian Film Festival is to go online, launching its own streaming platform with a selection of winners from the Satyajit Ray Short Film Competition.

Due to be held in June this year, LIFF has gone digital because of coronavirus restrictions and will show movies online in a range of South Asian languages.

Working with New Zealand’s Shift 72, which launched CPH:Dox online in March, the new U.K. geo-blocked platform launches with the award winners of the last nine years of the Satyajit Ray Short Film Competition.

The ‘London Indian Film Festival at Home’ platform is viewable at loveliffathome.com.

The showcased short films have been programmed together for the first time and include early works by Neeraj Ghaywan, the director of Cannes FIPRESCI and Prix de l’Avenir winner “Masaan,” and Shubashish Bhutiani, the director of “Hotel Salvation” whose short film “Kush” (pictured above) won in 2014.

The festival says it will follow this with a host of feature films being launched in the summer.

The festival has been supported by an Audience Award from the British Film Institute, using National Lottery funds, and the Bagri Foundation, to develop its new hybrid, part-digital and part-cinema based model strategy that will be rolled out this year and into the future.

The London Indian Film Festival was first held in 2010.

Cary Rajinder Sawhney, executive and programming director of the festival, said: “On the 99th birth anniversary month of the world’s most loved Indian director Satyajit Ray, it seems almost a tryst with destiny to be able to show, for the first time, all the winners together of the renowned Satyajit Ray Short Film Competition, that the Ray family kindly supported because the films must enshrine Ray’s empathetic vision of humanity.”

Ben Luxford, head of BFI Audiences, added: “We are delighted to support LIFF’s ambitious plans to present the festival online and, by doing so, ensure that this year’s program of South Asian cinema reaches an even wider audience, starting with a unique opportunity to see the winners of the Satyajit Ray Short Film Competition over the last nine years. We look forward to seeing the full program as it is developed.”